From 2007-2011 this blog was mainly about my animals with a bit of off-topic chatter. Then my husband shocked my by confessing to an affair. We've divorced. Life is better than ever!

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Stella and hormones and noise

Stella is still doing a fair amount of digging in the carpet we have in front of our door so that we don't track snow and dirt in the house. It's scrap carpet, so not doing any damage to our house; however, we don't want to trigger her to go into nesting mode, and it's probably not good for her to be spending so much time surrounded by the dirt that comes off of our shoes!This morning, she started playing with Thomas's indoor shoe. We cannot go barefoot in our house because of all of the wood chips that Rocky leaves around. Guess who's making that noise in the background?

It's Calypso, the quietest of all of our parrots! He wanted something, though I couldn't figure out what he wanted and he stopped the noise when we went to shower.

In a comment a few days ago, Beloved Parrot asked if we lived in an apartment and how our neighbors responded to the noise.

We do not live in an apartment -- we have a single family home on a decent-sized lot. Our neighbors are not all that close. However, they can occasionally hear the parrots, even in winter when everyone's windows are closed. With the windows open, I have heard Rocky from several blocks away.

Most of our neighbors do not know that we have parrots -- it's something we try to keep relatively quiet since sometimes parrots are stolen and we don't want that happening to our guys. I imagine they wonder about the beeping and other strange noises -- where is it all coming from?

In the summer, we have to keep our windows closed much more frequently than we would like due to Rocky's screaming. We don't want to risk noise complaints or face an ultimatum with him (which would force us to move since he's not going anywhere).

We'd love to move downtown and buy a condo to be closer to the art things we like to do -- symphony, theaters, museums, etc. However, that will certainly not be possible with Rocky. I think with adequate sound proofing, we could live with the rest of the parrots in a condo. Their noises are much quieter than Rocky's, and they make them much less frequently.